Translocal Celebrity Activism: Shark-Protection Campaigns in Mainland China Elaine Jeffreys University of Technology Sydney To cite this article: Elaine Jeffreys (2016): Translocal celebrity activism: shark-protection campaigns in mainland China, Environmental Communication, DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2016.1198822 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2016.1198822 Shanghai-born Yao Ming, a retired star player with the American National Basketball Association, is the celebrity face of translocal conservation campaigns to stop the consumption of shark-fin soup in Chinese restaurants worldwide. The standard justification for such communication practices is that they will generate media publicity and save shark populations, by encouraging increasingly affluent Chinese consumers to stop eating a luxury food item based on cruel and unsustainable practices. To date, there has been limited research on the nature of shark-protection campaigns in mainland China, the proclaimed major future market for shark fin. This paper fills that gap. It contends that these campaigns have missed their target, being heavily influenced by communication strategies used in international campaigns and providing incoherent local framing. Declining demand for shark fin demonstrates instead that government austerity measures have had a greater impact on luxury consumption practices, inadvertently highlighting the potential of “authoritarian environmentalism”. Key words: Celebrity; China; framing; media; shark consumption; authoritarian environmentalism Elaine Jeffreys is Professor, International Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Correspondence to: Elaine Jeffreys, School of International Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, 1 CB10.5.405, PO Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia. Email: [email protected] Shark-fin soup is a luxury food item consumed in contemporary societies largely by ethnically Chinese people at banquets marking momentous occasions, such as Chinese New Year and weddings, and government and corporate events. Shark fin became an established ingredient in Chinese haute cuisine during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Traditionally, shark-fin soup was served as a tribute to the emperor, the proclaimed ruler of all under heaven. It honoured the emperor because of the risk and expense involved in catching a “fierce” wild animal, and the belief that some of the animal’s vitality would be conferred on those who ate its fins (Clarke, Milner-Gulland, & Cemare, 2007, p. 307; Fabinyi, 2011, p. 88). Today, serving shark-fin soup honours the host and their guests, both by confirming the wealth or status of the host and intimating that the guests are respected by the persons or organizations paying for the banquet. Eating shark-fin soup is a social event. International non-governmental organizations (NGOs) concerned with marine conservation, for example, WildAid, contend that shark-fin consumption is based on cruel and unsustainable fishing practices. The San Francisco-based NGO claims that “fins from up to 73 million sharks” are used every year for shark-fin soup (Sharks, n.d.). Some of these sharks are finned alive and then thrown back into the ocean to drown or bleed to death, because the fins have more commercial value than the rest of the shark. China’s growing prosperity means that an increasing number of people can now afford to serve a “once rare and expensive delicacy” (Sharks, n.d.). This increasing consumption threatens to make one-third of open-ocean shark populations extinct, destroying a 400-million-year-long balance of ocean marine life. Yet shark fin reportedly has little flavour or nutritional and medicinal value, and eating shark fin may be unhealthy as shark fins contain high concentrations of mercury and other toxins (Sharks, n.d.). Using the now standard marketing practices of international NGOs (Brockington, 2009; Hassid & Jeffreys, 2015), WildAid has enlisted celebrity ambassadors – including basketball player Yao Ming – to generate spectacular media publicity for its Shark Conservation Program. WildAid’s shark conservation program is a translocal activist strategy aiming to connect and influence people in different locations at the same time through the exchange of celebrity- 2 endorsed information, ideas and identities. The program’s core conservation message – “when the buying stops, the killing can too” – is directed at multiple locations and audiences around the world through multilingual broadcast, print and social media. The celebrities that deliver this message have international, national and local appeal. The rollout of specific campaigns mobilizes diverse networks of actors to transform both individual behaviours and government practice, by attempting to stop shark-fin consumption and obtain support for anti-shark finning legislation. The program also elicits different forms of sociability and community activity. Some of these are intended, such as expressions of cosmopolitan environmental awareness displayed through refusal to eat shark-fin dishes, participation in public education activities, and activism for legislative change. Others are neither intended nor desirable, such as vituperative claims to the effect that “all Chinese go out of their way to eat endangered species because of superstitious health beliefs” and “all anti-shark finning activists are racist China bashers” (Watson, 2005; see also comments on Chan, 2013; Reynolds, 2013). As a translocal activist strategy, WildAid’s shark conservation program demonstrates George Lakoff’s claim that successful communication about new conceptions of and action on the environment requires “coherent framing”. Lakoff (2010) argues that human beings do not perceive the meaning of “facts” directly; we think via typically unconscious (but socially variable) interpretive contexts which he calls “frames”. It is not the case that: “if you just tell people the facts, they will reason to the right conclusion” (Lakoff, 2010, pp. 72–3). Facts “will be ignored”, unless they make sense in terms of culturally-embedded systems of frames, which include sociological roles, locales, etiquette, general modes of understanding, values, emotional patterns, and so on (Lakoff, 2010, pp. 72–3, 71 & 77). To be communicated successfully, “the facts” must be framed persuasively and coherently, without activating opposing frames, and associated counter-arguments and conventional habits (Lakoff, 2010, pp. 72 & 79). Persuasive framing could entail: using an exemplary messenger; appropriate visuals; narratives that link the frames and the message; framing issues in morally acceptable terms; and never repeating the opposing arguments (Lakoff, 2010, pp. 79–80). This paper explores the relevance of Lakoff’s conception of “coherent framing” for translocal environmental communication by examining the rollout and reception of shark-protection campaigns in mainland China. It first details the celebrity-endorsed campaign promoted in mainland China by the international NGO WildAid. It then examines the shark-protection 3 efforts of business elites associated with the China Entrepreneur’s Club. Finally, it explores why these activist efforts are superseded in significance by government austerity measures. The paper thus offers an empirically informed study of contemporary mediatized environmental communication (and conflict) as a product of the mutually constitutive, but often unpredictable, interactions between NGO-activism, media, industry and formal politics, which traverse the local, national and transnational to varying degrees (see Hutchins & Lester, 2015). The paper also raises the issue of “authoritarian environmentalism”. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a focus of debates on the relative merits of “democratic versus authoritarian environmentalism” because of its growing number of environmental organizations and comparatively rapid advances in legislation on environmental protection (Eaton & Kostka, 2014; Gilley, 2012). China’s system of one-party rule has enabled the Party-state to ignore many pressing environmental issues and ensured that Chinese environmental organizations typically complement state goals of tackling (in politically non- confronting ways) the environmental degradation that has accompanied rapid economic growth (Ho & Edmonds, 2012; Shapiro, 2012). However, the Party-state also has the perceived capacity to implement significant environmental protection policies quickly because, unlike in western democracies, it does not have to cater to the interests of high- consuming citizens as voters, and can arguably override the interests of business groups that might be opposed to environmental action (Gilley, 2012, p. 288). This capacity is inadvertently highlighted by changing patterns of shark fin consumption associated with the recent introduction of government austerity measures in the PRC. I conclude that translocal celebrity environmental activism in mainland China has missed its target, being heavily influenced by communication strategies used in international campaigns and providing incoherent local framing. In particular, efforts to reduce shark-fin consumption through changing individual discretionary behaviour overlook the considerable consumption associated with official largesse. Declining demand for shark fin associated with government austerity measures demonstrates claims that broader efforts to reduce corruption may have greater potential to